Trouble can follow athletes admitted on academic pass

Universities take on extra academic risk and burden when they accept an athlete who does meet normal admissions standards. Often, they end up in academic trouble, studies show.

In fact, even recruited athletes who do meet admissions standards are more likely to get into academic trouble than other students, the studies say.

In a study of 33 Ivy League and liberal arts colleges published in 2001, researchers affiliated with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation reported that 81 percent of athletes in major sports ranked in the bottom third of their class.

A separate Mellon study, published in 2003, examined athletes at 30 other schools including Duke, Michigan, Georgetown, Northwestern, Stanford, Notre Dame, Penn State and North Carolina.

That study also showed underperformance by athletes in the classroom, and concluded that universities were too lax during the recruiting and admissions processes in evaluating academic potential.

Like most universities, Alabama, Auburn and the University of Alabama at Birmingham have admitted athletes who didn't meet the institutions' minimum standards.

"There were a number of football players who came in that way who turned out to be great students," said Roger Thompson, a former Alabama associate vice president for enrollment management who left the university in June for Indiana University.

The athletics department, he said, exercises no influence over admissions. "We never had coaches or athletic administrators or any folks associated with athletics put pressure on us to accept a student-athlete."

Gene Marsh, an Alabama law professor and member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, said special admissions pose extra risk for a university. Academic fraud cases often involve a student who was a known academic risk when admitted, he said.

"That's where things go wrong - reaching too far," he said. "It's one thing to take a risk on someone. It's quite another one to take a risk on someone with everybody saying, 'You've got to be kidding.'"

Not all universities give admissions breaks to athletes.

Bob Roller, athletics director at Samford University, said its no-exceptions policy might mean the university doesn't land some blue-chip athletes.

"Sure, there are times over the course of years it probably affects your win-loss record in various sports. That's the negative side for those whose jobs are on the hot seat, because it's still college athletics," he said. "But I think we've always turned it into a positive. And they (Samford's teams) do very well on the field."